Historian
by Ewbrows
Summary: A boy is the last of a secret organization meant to prevent the loss of knowledge and literature. His past and future is explored in this fic, along with some major plot developments in later updates (maybe?). Rated T for now.
1. Chapter 1

I woke with an ache in my back along with the muscle soreness that came with living in a post-apocalyptic Earth. I was in the plastic curtains of the greenhouse. The repurposed artificial sunlamps hung over the various plants needed for a growing boy's nutrition, along with some spices I found because I couldn't bear eating the dehydrated rations I had without something that could get rid of the metallic taste.

I peeled myself off of the plastic lawn chair I was sitting in, the sweat clinging to my back and the chair. I gave my plants a once over with some water and liquid fertilizer. At one point in human history, the "Golden Age", people grew plants in a liquid blend of nutrients and water that somehow gave a boost to plant life, making them grow very fast and much bigger than they normally would, creating full-sized trees in a manner of minutes instead of years. My biological mother had once given me a bowling ball sized blueberry when I was younger, for a celebration on my birthday, in lieu of the traditional cake.

I still have never had a cake. They looked almost inedible on all the cinematics I've seen, because who eats something that has parts that catch fire? But it's the reactions that intrigue me. The sheepish smiles at the badly tuned song and the aura of happiness radiating from their faces make me want something like that, if only just once.

Tomorrow is my birthday, April 1st. I will turn seventeen years old. I won't have a cake, or a party, or someone to sing a song to me.

I passed under the clear plastic curtain and out the door. I went towards the inner part of the Dome, where a spiral staircase wound straight up. Once I had heaved my sore legs all the way up the stairs and into the grand library, I heard a voice.

"Hello, Leo!" said the voice, thick with a British accent.

"Hello IVAN" I called back, my voice echoing off the cylindrical walls. "I need a report on those books you were trying to restore, and a report on the preserved physical copies." I thought about it for a second. "I also want a report on the progress of the electronic translator's work on the expansion of the digital library." I added.

"Ah, taking inventory, I see!" IVAN remarked.

The nearby wall screen spit out the reports for me to read. This library was my main duty. I was the only remaining protector of the literature of humanity. There used to be other protectors, both here and in other caches, all are known to be dead or missing. This was only one of the caches of books across Earth, containing only about 20% of the old humanity's physical copies. Thankfully enough, networks akin to the Internet (my personal favorite) sprang up between the protectors before the Collapse, and digital copies of some of the books stored there. The protectors of my Dome had fought over whether to preserve the physical copies or focus on creating a robot to transfer the physicals into digitals. None of the original protectors of my Dome had thought of trying to use the Internet or get any sort of semblance of technological education, because they all expected the robots under their control to do it for them. The robots didn't have any sort of AI or anything, just meant to take orders. So, I got access to the Internet shortly after their deaths, and found an assignment extended to all protectors on a network that was impregnable for all intents and purposes except for my own. The assignment was to preserve physicals as best as possible with resources at hand, but to focus on the digitals as the main task at hand. It also came with instructions for survival in the Domes, and IVAN's AI. IVAN could be installed directly into the Dome, which was built in with its own supercomputer. It was really a shame that the protectors never thought to go through the (admittedly arduous) process of accessing the Internet, and that the Collapse was so sudden to them that they couldn't get in contact with the other Domes, because this Dome was the most populated, the largest, and equipped with the best computer. The protectors apparently even had enough funding for some advanced robotics, which IVAN helped me put to use in making the electronic reader and making a body for them to use so they could improve the Dome and themself.

The reports were fantastic, actually. It was supposed to take ten years to translate all of the books, but IVAN predicted it would be cut down to eight and a half, meaning it would be another few months until it was finished. IVAN preserved all the books that he expected to perish within that timeframe, and the physical lifespan of all the books would be extended as far as possible after they were all copied digitally.

I wasn't really worried about the books or anything in the library, but I thought I'd check to take my mind off of it at the very least. In reality, I needed to worry about the Dome being overrun. The Hive were expanding in North America, being met with some resistance by the Fallen. I wouldn't say it aloud, but I don't think the Fallen will last long. The Hive's numbers were absolutely unprecedented, and the Fallen's technology was good, but against the Hive's ridiculous size, they didn't stand very much of a chance.

I descended the stairs to see the only other person I've interacted with since the other protectors' deaths.

"(Leo, we need to spar today, and you should do some of your chores.)" the Fallen Archon said, with a series of snarling and clicking.

"(Sektus, I only just woke up not too long ago, I don't‒)" I replied, my aching muscles reminding me what yesterday's spar was like.

"(Leo, I've given you enough of a break, you need to stay ready.)" Sektus interrupted. He didn't actually use the word "ready" because Fallen have a lot of words for "ready." The word he said closely resembles the word for "oiled" and was used in terms of being prepared for an oncoming battle.

I sighed, "(Yeah...I know, I'm just sore because I slept wrong and yesterday's spar we…)" I trailed off.

He gave me a once-over, "(You fell asleep in the Greenhouse again didn't you?)" he said accusingly.

All I had in reply was a shrug and a little smile. His expression was equally concerned and abashed. He didn't tell me that what I did was bad for my back among numerous other things, such as having a perfectly good room and the lamps could give me a sunburn, because I knew all that and he knew that I knew and it got pretty redundant after the fourth time. He placed an arm lightly behind my shoulders, and even though they were pretty broad, his fingertips could almost touch my right shoulder, while the base of his palm was resting on my left. I once saw this gesture as condescending and rude, when I was entering my teen years at thirteen. He kept doing it, but explained that it was meant as a gesture of tenderness towards a younger member of your family. Culturally, it meant that he saw me as a son, or a younger brother. I never complained about it again.

We got into the repurposed mess hall through the large double doors. Almost all the places here were once meant for up to 20 people. We moved the tables out and crushed the counters to make room for our spars a long time ago. I did quite a bit of stretching to prep myself, and a bit more to alleviate the aches that plagued my musclec. I grabbed my swords off of the rack. Compared to Sektus' swords, they were toothpicks. Sektus' size made him naturally slower, but he was incredibly nimble with the swords. His arms rebelled against and betrayed his size, moving into a blur of metal with the slightest movement. They refused the judgement that most of his enemies came to, making him an incredibly dangerous foe. The only one capable of matching (sometimes) his agility is me, but I don't have the kind of strength he does, nor the four arms. Our spars never ended with me winning, but he's told me that I would have been able to kill any Fallen that wasn't an Archon, a fact that I was quite proud of.

I swung my swords in a large arc.

"(Let's do this.)"


	2. Chapter 2

9 years ago

We were all sitting and eating in the mess hall at the time. The meals were bland and tasteless, but the people I sat with were alive, bright with conversation and rum. I listened, not knowing what they had been talking about, but listening all the same. Their giddiness was infectious, even if I didn't really understand the grown-up jokes or stories they told. In the future, I would find it strange that they should be so celebratory, when they had no contact with any other shred of humanity and hadn't for years.

I had finished my fourth year of education under these people. They taught me basic things, like reading, writing, basic math, but hey also taught me of our purpose here, in the Dome. We served as protectors to the knowledge of humanity, and we must yield the knowledge to no one. We had to preserve our race, and create a civilization. I was told that the first protectors of this Dome had witnessed the Collapse, and taken in humans from the outside to help preserve the knowledge. Eight whole generations of protectors had passed, and I was the first of the ninth. Humans were not taken in after the fifth generation, because they had all vanished and the creatures of the Dark had spread across the land. I had wondered why no other child had been conceived after me. It struck me that I was probably one of the only combinations of protectors' genes that wouldn't result in inbreeding. I was raised by the whole community, knowing my biological mother, but never my father, because he never deemed it necessary to tell me and I never deemed it necessary to know.

A sudden alarm sounded, one I had only heard in drills. It was the attack alarm, a hostile being was breaking in. The protectors all went pale at once, the myriad of colors that painted under their skins had been flushed unceremoniously from their features. They immediately rushed towards the door after the brief hesitation. I tried to go too, but a large brown-colored woman who I knew as Ariella stopped me. She was visibly tearing up, but she bent down to meet my eyes, an intense shimmering brown staring into my light blue.

"You need to take this," she said calmly, pushing a screen that had a plot of all the doors mapped out on it into my hands, "and you need to go into the spiral stairwell, and lock the doors to the library and to the stairwell, do you understand?" she told me.

It was a remote, meant to control the doors for the whole Dome.

I nodded quickly and was about to run off, but another person stopped me, an unidentifiable man this time. I had seen him before, but never talked to him, because he seemed to avoid me. His facial features were blank and forgettable, seemingly lost in the chaos. He gave me a loaded pistol, which also seemed blank to me. When I looked up at him, he pressed a finger to his lips and ran off, faster than everybody else, and made it to the mess hall door before the rest got there. His hand was on the door as it was ripped off, and if that didn't kill him, the gun that lit up the doorway did.

It was obvious that the creatures of Darkness were never smart enough to get into the Dome, except the Fallen, which, strangely, had never shown interest in it. I thought that the protectors believed that they had finally decided to loot the place. But it wasn't Fallen.

The only thing that would break into a place like the Dome was a Guardian of Light.

She slaughtered half of them before I found myself running to the stairwell.

My head was pounding, my heart was beating too fast to tell if there was any time in between the beats, I was hyperventilating, and an intense panic had overwhelmed me. They were all dead. I was going to be dead soon. I had delayed the Guardian only enough to make her angry when she found me.

The large pod doors to the spiral stairwell that lead up to the library were shut, and I could hear her pounding on the other side. I was sitting on the stairs, waiting. I had also ordered a lockdown on the library doors, and waited on the stairs below them with my pistol shaking in my hand.

I heard blasts of another kind, something that wasn't the methodical banging of the Guardian on the door. The banging stopped. Sweet silence filled the air before the pod doors were torn off the stairwell.

Snarling and clicking and phlegm-filled Fallen speech made its way up to my ears. I heard a voice speaking in a strangely accented English.

"You...can come out...now"

I cautiously descended, finding a dead Guardian and a broken Ghost, and as I stepped over the Guardian's dead body, I was greeted squad of Fallen. Dregs were scattered about. Vandals lined the edge of the room, lurking. The Archon who I had to thank for my life stood in the middle of the room. A Vandal tried to speak once more in broken English. Their language seemed to come from their gut, not their throat, and he was having a hard time differentiating.

I didn't listen to the Vandal. I started to cry, because at that time, I knew that I could bargain with the Fallen. I knew that I could live. I knew that my survival was more important than anything else, for the sake of the human race, no matter how much I wanted to die at that very moment.

Between the completely hollow feeling I had in my body, my exhaustion, the situation I was in, and my currently suicidal disposition, I suddenly did not want to talk to any Fallen. I looked the Archon in the eyes for a long time. Even though I clutched the pistol with all my might, the rifles of the Vandals and the pistols of the Dregs lowered. The Archon held a facial expression that I would later recognize as concern. I couldn't tell how long he was staring, or what he was getting out of doing this, or anything about him, and I honestly didn't care. I strode out, right between him and a surprised Dreg. I don't remember getting to my room, but I remember crying myself to sleep.


End file.
